The issue of lesbianism in contemporary indian films a comparative study of transnational, bollywood and regional film

Table Of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter One: Analysis of the transnational Indian films: Fire, Chutney Popcorn, Nina’s Heavenly Delights, I Can’t Think Straight and The World Unseen 23

THE ISSUE OF LESBIANISM IN CONTEMPORARY INDIAN FILMS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF TRANSNATIONAL, BOLLYWOOD AND REGIONAL

Signed Statement

This dissertation represents my own work and due acknowledgement is given whenever information is derived from other sources No part of this dissertation has been or is being concurrently submitted for any other qualification at any other university

Signed………

Acknowledgements

This thesis could not have been completed without the guidance and supervision of my supervisor, Assoc Prof Chitra Sankaran, Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore Her caring nature and concern has resonated within me and I remain extremely grateful to her for giving me timely and constructive feedback, ensuring that I was on the right path and pointing me towards useful research articles and books

I would like to thank the National University of Singapore for financial assistance accorded to me in the form of the Graduate Research Scholarship

My deepest gratitude goes to my parents, who have lovingly and patiently put

up with me through trying times when writing this thesis, patiently and meticulously reading through drafts of each chapter, and providing the much needed words of encouragement to see this thesis through its completion

Lastly, I would like to thank my friend, Chay Wan Ching, who has been a steadfast companion through the years of graduate studies at the National University of Singapore Our lunches and dinners together have provided me with an outlet for discussions as well as frustrations when writing became an overwhelming task

Thank you all very much

Table Of Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter One: Analysis of the transnational Indian films: Fire, Chutney Popcorn, Nina’s Heavenly Delights, I Can’t Think Straight and The World Unseen 23

Chapter Two: Analysis of the Bollywood and regional films: Girlfriend and The Journey/Sancharram 54

Chapter Three: Discussion of the seven films 72

Conclusion 105

List of works cited 110

Films 119

List of other works consulted 120

This thesis argues that the portrayal of lesbian women in these films is not geared towards any acceptance of alternative sexuality Instead, the portrayals serve to reinforce negative stereotypes associated with lesbianism within the conservative Indian societal norm An exception to this is the regional Malayalam film which successfully tries to bring forth a positive model for discussing and depicting lesbianism in an Indian societal context

To illustrate my argument, a corpus of seven films from the years 1996 to 2008 will be analyzed These Indian films, till date, are the only ones that talk about

lesbianism explicitly The five transnational Indian films are Fire, Chutney Popcorn, Nina’s Heavenly Delights, I Can’t Think Straight and The World Unseen The Bollywood film is Girlfriend and the Malayalam film is Sancharram or The Journey

A brief introduction of the genres of transnational, Bollywood and regional films will

be given in the introductory chapter, as well as a brief history of lesbianism in Indian

to situate the films in a historical and socio-cultural context

Chapter One and Two will engage in a close-reading of the films to bring out certain common themes and issues Chapter One will analyze the five transnational films as these films are produced out of India Chapter Two will analyze the Bollywood and regional films as these films are produced in India

The theoretical framework has been narrowed down to queer theory and feminist film theory to focus on how the depiction of lesbianism in the films reinforces negative stereotypes The main issues and themes of the male gaze, cinema portraying

an ideological view of reality, racial differences, the history of sexuality, generic differences between the seven films and the resultant impact on the depiction of lesbianism, and performativity, have been contextualized within this theoretical framework and will be discussed in the third chapter

The concluding chapter wraps up the thesis by offering possible future directions for Indian spectatorship as well as stating the limitations of this study

Detailed outline of thesis

Introduction

• Argument

• Choice of topic and film texts

• My position as a researcher

• Background of transnational Indian films

• Background of Bollywood films

• Background of regional films

• Theoretical background (Queer theory)

• Brief history of lesbianism in India

• Current status of homosexuality in India

• Division of chapters

Chapter One (Analysis of the transnational Indian films)

• Close reading done of Fire, Chutney Popcorn, Nina’s Heavenly Delights, I Can’t Think Straight and The World Unseen

• These five films are discussed in this chapter because they are produced out of India

• Main themes arising from the analysis are discussed in Chapter Three with feminist film theory and queer theory as the background

Chapter Two (Analysis of Bollywood and regional film)

• Close reading done of Girlfriend and The Journey/Sancharram

• These two films are discussed in this chapter because they are produced in India

• Main themes arising from the analysis are discussed in Chapter Three with feminist film theory and queer theory as the background

Chapter Three (Discussion of the seven films)

• Overview of feminist film theory

• Themes and issues discussed within the framework of feminist film theory:

o Male and female gaze

o The idea that cinema constructs an ideological view of reality

 Interviews by the seven film directors

 Statements of disavowal with regards to lesbianism in their films

 Political protests that the films elicited

o Racial differences

 Looking relations

 Strategies that encourage viewers to gloss over racial tensions

o The history of sexuality (with a focus on Foucault)

o Generic differences between the seven films and the resultant impact on the depiction of lesbianism

 Negotiation of tensions between the languages of the films

 Use of English Language—Deborah Cameron, Dale Spender and Margaret Doyle

o Gender performativity

 Mary Ann Doane and the masquerade

 Sue-Ellen Case and butch-femme roles

 Baudrillard and simulacrum (Introduce the notion of hyper reality)

 Judith Butler’s notion of heterosexuality as a ‘copy of a copy’

contextualised within Baudrillard’s notion of hyper reality

 Argue that films do not subvert gender norms by deploying femme roles

butch-Conclusion

• Restatement of the argument

• Summary of each chapter in brief

• Possible future directions

• Limitations of the study

The Issue of Lesbianism in Contemporary Indian Films: A Comparative

Study of Transnational, Bollywood and Regional Films

Introduction

Contemporary Indian cinema has undergone substantial changes over the last couple of decades In trying to keep at par with the forces of modernisation that are taking India by storm, some Indian film directors have attempted to deviate from the run of the mill romantic movies to try and delve into controversial and even taboo topics such as homosexuality Within the realm of homosexuality, lesbianism and not male homosexuality, has been the primary focus Films dealing solely with male homosexuality are mostly available as art-house productions in Indian cinema The issue, however, has not been given serious screen space in

mainstream films A Bollywood film released in the year 2008, titled Dostana

(Friendship), hinted at a gay relationship but the effect was one of mockery rather than an effort to allay negative stereotypes that surround the gay community in general in India or abroad

In making films that deal with female sexuality and lesbianism explicitly, there appears to be an active assertion that Indian society at large has matured and

is ready to face such sensitive and even possibly problematic issues However, Indian society is largely conservative and the films dealing with the subject of lesbianism, centring on the problem of female sexuality, are in reality being made for a society where it is still deemed taboo to talk about female sexuality openly, let alone expose the issue on the big screen

In an attempt to circumvent this societal taboo, a more active exploration of this subject has been done in transnational Indian films These films are hybrid films that straddle two dominant genres of cinema, namely Hollywood and

target audience, namely those educated in the language within India as well as the Indian diaspora outside of India, and also those who are not necessarily of Indian origin The directors of these films are of Indian origin but settled outside of India

in countries such as Canada, the United States of America and the United Kingdom The films, however, are still very much situated and work within the mainstream Indian society and its film industry This point will be further elaborated in the section detailing transnational films within the introduction

In this thesis, I will argue that these transnational Indian films, at one level, try very hard to tackle the issue of lesbianism in a manner that would be acceptable

to both the Indian audiences and audiences at the global level However, from another perspective, the portrayal of lesbian women in these films serves to reinforce the negative stereotypes associated with lesbianism within the conservative Indian societal norm At this point, it is important to note that the flaws of a particular society are being exposed, and in so doing, one can argue that

a positive approach to lesbianism can be achieved without necessarily strengthening the homophobic core social structure In this study, I will show that these portrayals actually do serve to strengthen the homophobic notions of Indian society Thus, the claimed original attempt to induce a change in perception about lesbianism and portray a mature society ready to deal with this issue, backfires In actuality, it further weakens the acceptance of alternate sexuality within Indian society as well as the global Indian diaspora which still embodies Indian cultural norms and values

The transnational Indian films that will be discussed in the thesis are (i)

Fire (1996), (ii) Chutney Popcorn (1999), (iii) Nina’s Heavenly Delights (2006), (iv) I Can’t Think Straight (2008) and (v) The World Unseen (2008)

Bollywood, till today, has only one commercial mainstream film on

lesbianism, Girlfriend (2004), shown primarily in India This Bollywood film will

be compared to the transnational films and evidence garnered to show that all the films in question (i.e transnational and pure Bollywood) are aligned in espousing the dominant ideology of heteronormativity, rendering homosexuality a western import that taints the Indian culture

Since it retains a very Bollywood feel in its films, transnational Indian cinema is sometimes grouped under the category of Bollywood cinema and not separately This portrays the dominance of Bollywood cinema, its popularized stereotyped images and mass commercialization of its movies that the world is familiar with All other films that are made regionally (outside Bollywood) in India have not been given their due recognition One regional film that has been very successful in bringing forth a positive model for discussing lesbianism is a

Malayalam film titled, The Journey (2004) This film is able to portray lesbianism

in a positive light even while localising the film to the Indian social context It tries

to negotiate the tensions between the homophobic Indian society, western constructions of homosexuality (portrayed in the transnational Indian films) and a

more positive portrayal of lesbians in India

Choice of topic and film texts

In Indian cinema, particularly Hindi cinema, female (homo)sexuality as a topic for serious discussion has always been swept under the carpet Deepa Mehta’s

film Fire, released in the year 1996, was the pioneering film that gave serious

screen space to the issue of female homosexuality Following in Mehta’s footsteps, many film directors have subsequently made films that centre solely on this issue The seven films that I have chosen for my thesis span the years 1996 to 2008,

covering the entire spectrum of films that have been made on the topic of lesbianism to date These films warrant attention not only because they highlight a taboo issue in Indian society, but also because for the first time, the taboo of lesbianism was lifted outside of the sphere of “art cinema”, where predominantly films on male homosexuality existed, but none on lesbianism Female same-sex desire, from being denied altogether, was slowly starting to emerge on the silver screen

A brief overview of the three different categories of films—transnational, Bollywood and regional—will be given in the paragraphs that follow for purposes

of definition as they will be used in the thesis

My position as a researcher

It is important to outline my position and interest in this research project as

a researcher I am an Indian female who has travelled outside of Singapore and India and I have seen the international gay cultures and communities The various cultural differences and different attitudes towards people of the gay community—

in particular the representation of lesbians in India—developed an interest in me to work on this issue The decision to work on films on this issue came about because the films have been broiled in political protests and controversies in India Female homosexuality in India has its roots in Indian culture and history but this has been vehemently denied The research done for this thesis is an attempt to add to the existing debates and existing work on this topic in the more recent times

Transnational Indian films

Transnational Indian films, as mentioned earlier, are films that are situated in-between the dominant cinematic genres of Hollywood and Bollywood The star cast of these films are names usually familiar in the Bollywood industry and

“Bollywood conventions are reflected in the aesthetic forms and narrative structures in a variety of [these] films” (Desai, 42) Transnational Indian films also

“feature Bollywood music both as background music as well as part of the narrative structure” (Desai, 42) In terms of the distribution of these films, transnational Indian film producers and directors “have employed the networks of distribution that circulate Indian films” (Desai, 42) The films then, although made

by diasporic filmmakers, are still very much situated and work within the mainstream Indian society and its film industry, particularly in their reference to India as a homeland that has been left behind The directors of these films also

“pursue the possibility of maximum exposure within India for their films attempting to simultaneously locate them in relation to Indian cinemas” (Desai, 42) as well as cinemas of their Western home countries It is important to note here that even films which are made independently depend "on the dominant film industry from production through distribution" (Desai, 202)

An important point about these films is that although they are made by Indian directors with a predominantly Indian star cast, their dialogues are in English The English dialogues not only eliminate the problems that would have occurred during translation had the dialogues been in any of the Indian languages but also are indicative of the audiences that these films are trying to reach out to: the English educated Indians and a more global audience not necessarily societally situated in India The cultural baggage that these taboo topics carry with them in their own linguistic contexts will be discussed in Chapter Three of this thesis

Bollywood

Bollywood cinema is the mainstream Hindi language cinema from the city

of Bombay (now known as Mumbai) in India The term Bollywood is a conflation

of two words, ‘Bombay’ and ‘Hollywood’ In recent years, Bollywood films have gained a currency like never before So what has happened that Bollywood films acquire an international appeal? According to Derek Bose, the answer

lies in the reasons a sizzling number like ‘Chumma Chumma’ from

China Gate (1998) gets transposed in a mainstream Hollywood film, Moulin Rouge (2001) or say, Andrew Lloyd Webber makes a song

and dance out of Bollywood’s extravagant cinematic traditions in

Bombay Dreams (2002) .Much as the Gurinder Chadha’s (Bride and Prejudice) and the Deepa Mehta’s (Water) make films ‘with an

Indian soul in a foreign body’, the anxiety to reach out to a global audience at all levels cannot be overlooked As any industry watcher will point out, never before has there been such a worldwide awakening towards Bollywood cinema and cross-fertilisation of film ideas and talent from the subcontinent In effect, mainstream Hindi film-makers are beginning to realise that it is possible to

intelligently design films that are viable both locally and

internationally (13)

Bollywood films have been known to incorporate clichéd “songs and dances, crossed lovers, ostentatious celebrations of glamour and spectacle, lost and found brothers, convenient coincidences and happy endings” (Bose, 11) However, with the films gaining worldwide popularity, and the rise of English-speaking middle-class Indians who demand more than just clichéd stereotypes to keep them sufficiently entertained, Bollywood films are now increasingly exploring unchartered territories Genres such as Film Noir, termed casually as Mumbai Noir

star-in Hstar-indi cstar-inema, realism and adaptations of classic literary works such William

Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Othello (Vishal Bharadwaj’s Maqbool and Omkara respectively) and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (Ram Gopal Verma’s Nishabd) are fast gaining precedence over stereotypical plots and storylines Girlfriend, the

movie on lesbianism to be discussed in this thesis, is one such attempt to incorporate an untouched and taboo subject in mainstream Bollywood cinema

Regional films

The term ‘Bollywood’ is sometimes used incorrectly to imply an overarching term for Indian cinema as a whole In reality, apart from the Bollywood film industry, regional Indian film industries exist as well India is home to a large number of regions and languages, where several of them support their own film industry in their vernacular languages The most common regional Indian film industries include Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, and Punjabi cinema These regional cinemas differ greatly from Bollywood cinema in terms of scale of production, profits garnered and the intellectual feel of a movie Tamil cinema is perhaps the only regional cinema which comes close to Bollywood with regards to formulaic conventions, scale of production and profits generated

from its films For example, the 2007 box office hit Sivaji: The Boss, directed by S

Shankar, is touted to be the most expensive Indian film ever made at the time of its release

The Malayalam film to be discussed in this thesis, The Journey, or Sancharram in Malayalam, is an example of a regional Indian film made in the

Indian state of Kerala Malayalam movies are considered to be more realistic than Bollywood films due to their content However, Malayalam cinema also has the tradition of commercial films to draw the masses in order to generate profits but these commercial films are not productions on a big scale such as Bollywood

Theoretical background

The seven films to be discussed in this thesis will be analysed through the lens of queer theory and feminist film theory Queer theory will be extrapolated in detail in the following paragraphs Feminist film theory will be outlined in detail in

Chapter Three, incorporating the major themes and issues of the seven films and these films are discussed with feminist film theory as the background

According to Annamarie Jagose, queer theory is "an umbrella term for a coalition of culturally marginal sexual self-identifications and at other times to describe a nascent theoretical model which has developed out of more traditional lesbian and gay studies" (1) Queer theory is not only about the merging together of lesbian and gay studies, but it is also about examining and investigating the heterosexual hegemony and patriarchy that is assumed to be natural and therefore unquestionable Such assumptions allow heteronormativity to be institutionalised and incorporated ideologically into daily life, ultimately becoming an acceptable norm that marginalises other sexualities that do not fall under the neat model of heterosexism It is important to note here that the concepts heterosexuality and patriarchy are intimately linked to each other Chrys Ingraham defines

heterosexuality as “a normalized power arrangement that limits options and privileges men over women and reinforces and naturalizes male dominance” (my

emphasis, 74), illustrating the complex relationship between heterosexuality and patriarchy

Queer theory asserts that normative categorizations of gender and sexuality are socially constructed For example, binaries such as man/woman, heterosexual/homosexual, masculine/feminine, etc Such constructions are essentialist (i.e something that is biologically predetermined and has transcendental moral truth in it) and “designate an unequal social and political power relation” (Seldon, Widdowson and Brooker, 244) between all the categories

of gender and sexuality Adrienne Rich’s essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” gives wide circulation to the concept of ‘compulsory

heterosexuality’ which challenges the taken-for-granted discourse and ideological construct of heterosexuality that serves to oppress lesbians particularly Rich asserts this persuasively when she says that “[o]ne of the many means of [heterosexual] enforcement is, of course, the rendering invisible of the lesbian possibility, an engulfed continent which rises fragmentedly into view from time to time only to become submerged again” (220) The double-whammy for lesbians becomes apparent in this statement: lesbians are not just women, but they are

women who desire other women, negating male sexual desire completely, and

therefore are rendered invisible

Queer theory has been influenced by a number of other theories, scholars and activist movements Gay and lesbian theories, feminist theory and subsequently lesbian feminism have all contributed heavily to the corpus of queer theory It will not be possible to do full justice to each and every contribution to queer theory due to the word limit of the thesis However, the following paragraphs will cover the major influential theorists on this still new and emerging corpus of theory

The term queer theory was first coined by feminist film critic Teresa de Lauretis in her influential essay "Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities",

published in the year 1991 in a journal titled differences (Origins of Queer Theory,

Web source) Queer theory, according to de Lauretis, “was arrived at in the effort

to avoid all of these [lesbian and gay] fine distinctions in our discursive protocols, not to adhere to any one of the given terms, not to assume their ideological liabilities, but instead to both transgress and transcend them—or at the very least problematize them” (v) Specifically, de Lauretis’s aim for coining the term ‘queer theory’ was to address the “continuing failure of representation [and] enduring

silence on the specificity of lesbianism in the contemporary “gay and lesbian” discourse” (vii)

One very important point that de Lauretis makes in her essay, relevant to this thesis, is regarding “the discursive constructions and constructed silences around the relations of race to identity and subjectivity in the practices of homosexualities and the representations of same-sex desire” (viii) The issues of race, ethnicity, class and geographical differences have not been sufficiently addressed in lesbian and gay theories to date In this context, it has to be kept in mind that the concerns of a (Caucasian) upper-class lesbian will be quite different

to the concerns of (in this case) a/n (Indian) lesbian To add to this difference is the geographical component, where Caucasian lesbians within western countries differ just as Indian lesbians who reside in western countries differ to those who reside in the Indian subcontinent These differences will be explored in this thesis in the

interracial relationships of the lesbians in the transnational Indian films, an area

which is shrouded in silence once again with regards to same-sex desire

De Lauretis, however, abandoned the term three years after coining it1

Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality: Volume One has been an

influential force for queer theory Though he does not specifically use the term 'queer', Foucault's explication on the "multiple operations of power and the problematics of defining homosexuality within discourse and history" (Selden, Widdowson, and Brooker, 245) set the groundwork for queer theory to develop in

, stating that the term 'Queer' "has been co-opted by those mainstream forces and institutions it was designed to resist" (Thurer,99)

1 Some theorists, such as David Halperin, are already suggesting that queer theory’s moment had

the next two decades after his work was published in 1976 For example, Foucault says of homosexuality and the homosexual that

the psychological, psychiatric, medical category of homosexuality was constituted from the moment it was characterized less by a type of sexual relations than by a certain quality of sexual sensibility, a certain way of inverting the masculine and the feminine in oneself Homosexuality appeared as one of the forms of sexuality when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy onto a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now

a species (43)

According to Foucault, the modern concept of homosexuality has arisen from the various discourses on it in different (medical) fields Prior to this conceptualisation, sex between two men was just sodomy, independent of the connotations of a

person's identity as a homosexual The nineteenth century, however, saw the

emergence of the homosexual as "a personage, a past, a case history, and a childhood, in addition to being a type of life Nothing that went into his total composition was unaffected by his sexuality" (Foucault, 43) Sexuality then becomes a fundamental aspect of a person's identity Foucault's underlying premise

throughout The History of Sexuality is that sexuality is socially constructed through

the various discourses that take place so that power can be built up hierarchically, and how ultimately sexuality is used in these power hierarchies to ascertain the acceptable and differentiate this from the deviant

Foucault, however, also argues that power is not necessarily a negative force Power can also be seen as a productive force in the sense that it allows a group of individuals to realise their identity and come together to give themselves a collective voice—in this case, the homosexuals Homosexual desire then was “no longer an unfortunate contingency of nature or fate; it was the positive basis of a

sexual and, increasingly, social, identity” (Weeks, Sexuality and its discontents,

50)

Apart from his explication on homosexuality, Foucault also identifies other areas which were affected by discourses on sexuality The two areas which are most relevant for this thesis are the sexualisation of the bodies of women, and the importance of sexuality for the purposes of reproduction, where the sexuality of adults becomes an object of scrutiny to eliminate all forms of other desires that were considered deviant and unacceptable These two areas are of particular importance where heterosexuality is concerned in relation to hegemonic discourse

Foucault’s work still retains currency for analyzing “social relations [as] inescapably the effect of language and the ceaseless workings of power, and there can be neither any escape from discourse nor any ending of power” (Weeks,

Making Sexual History, 120) Foucault rids sexuality of the notions of essentialism

and gives it a constructivist approach, where sexuality and sexual identities are the result of social constructs and discourses

Feminist theory has also contributed influentially towards queer theory Apart from theorists such as Adrienne Rich, it is Judith Butler’s work that has gained ascendancy in queer theory Butler’s concept of performativity of gender has proved crucial to feminists and queer theorists alike In her essay

“Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory”, Butler writes that

gender is in no way a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts proceede; rather, it is an identity tenuously constituted

in time—an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts

Further, gender is instituted through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and enactments of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self .gender identity is a

performative accomplishment compelled by social sanction and taboo (270-271)

According to Butler, the “stylized repetition of acts” (270) are bodily acts, movements and gestures that are granted social approval, and are socially and politically policed in keeping with the “system of compulsory heterosexuality” (275) Through this, gender is then “tenuously constituted in time” (270), which gives gender the illusion of being a stable entity, with “ ‘natural’ appearances and

‘natural’ heterosexual dispositions” (275)

Gender as performative and as a performance then reveals the fictional construct of different categories of identity, which arise due to different discourses and regimes of power These identity categories are fictional in the sense that “they

do not pre-exist the regimes of power/knowledge but are performative products of them They are performative in the sense that the categories themselves produce the identity they are deemed to be simply representing” (Jagger, 17) Hence, there is no notion of some kind of an internal essence or nature that dictates one’s gender or identity

Butler later writes in her book Gender Trouble that her main aim is to ask

“how do non-normative sexual practices call into question the stability of gender as

a category of analysis” (xi) and how “one is a woman, according to this framework,

to the extent that one functions as one within the dominant heterosexual frame and

to call the frame into question is perhaps to lose something of one’s sense of place

in gender” (xi) Here, it is important to note that for Butler, gender’s “very character as performative [has in it] the possibility of contesting its reified status” (“Performative Acts”, 271) When normative categories of gender are deconstructed, this paves the way for lesbian and gay subject-positions to be

legitimized (Jagose, 83) Butler particularly focuses on drag as a performance that

subverts gender norms In Gender Trouble, she says of drag that

As much as drag creates a unified picture of “woman” (what its critics often oppose), it also reveals the distinctness of those aspects

of gendered experience which are falsely naturalized as a unity

through the regulatory fiction of heterosexual coherence In imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender itself—as well as its contingency (original emphasis, 187)

However, in her later book, Bodies That Matter, Butler emphasizes that

“performativity is neither free play nor theatrical self-presentation; nor can it be simply equated with performance” (quoted in Jagose, 87) Butler highlights her point here that gender performativity, unlike clothing, cannot be put on and discarded at a person’s will

Queer theory has its fair share of criticism Since queer theory deconstructs and disrupts fixed entities and categorizations of gender and identity, it has been argued that queer theory is “explicitly oppositional to feminism, especially lesbianism and radical feminism [and] as a consequence, the development and increasing proliferation of queer theory is seen as posing a threat to both lesbian/feminist theory and politics and to the lesbian/feminist subject” (Richardson, 34) This particular criticism of queer theory is seen to be valid even today because, in deconstructing identity, it makes political action and social activism difficult since “people determinedly unsure of who and what they are do not make a powerful revolutionary force” (Jeffreys, 39) Sheila Jeffreys, however, points to a hopeful future where heterosexuality (as a political institution) will be decentred and the possibilities and avenues open to women will be different from what they are now (39) Queer theory’s political inefficacy has led other theorists,

particularly feminists and lesbian feminists, to label it as an elitist enterprise that can only sustain itself in the ivory towers of academia

Another criticism fired at queer theory is that the approach it takes towards the two genders—masculine and feminine—inevitably ends up reproducing these two dominant genders rather than engaging in the “feminist project of the elimination of gender, thereby helping to maintain the currency of gender” (Jeffreys, 44) This becomes an inherent problem in queer theory especially for lesbian feminists who seek to break away from the normative modes of male domination and female subordination

The queer theory explicated so far in this chapter will be used to critique the ideological discourses, perspectives and assumptions underlying the cinematic representations in the films It will be used to show how hegemonic discourses on gender and sexuality bring about negative stereotypes and a fear of the Other, where the Other can be defined as anything that deviates from the status quo This theoretical framework in itself has shortcomings, detailed in Chapter Three, particularly in reference to Foucault and Butler

At this point, it is prudent to note that the queer theory explicated so far has its foundations in Western thought and philosophy Keeping in mind that this thesis

deals specifically with the issue of lesbianism in Indian films, a Eurocentric model

of queer theory may not be sufficient for the intended analysis of the seven films in this thesis Attention has to be paid to the parallel gay/lesbian and queer theories arising from the other side of the planet Theoretical works by scholars such as Giti Thadani, Ruth Vanita, Gayatri Gopinath and Suparna Bhaskaran, among many others, have contributed to the corpus of queer theory in India Cultural specificities, race, class and ethnicity differentials as well as the history of

homosexuality in India—which is distinctly different from the history of homosexuality given by theorists such as Michel Foucault and Jeffery Weeks—all have to be taken into account These accounts differ substantially from Western accounts of homosexuality and the rise of queer theory in Western academia, although the influence of these Western theorists cannot be ignored

The next section will give a brief history of lesbianism in India in order to

historically, socio-politically and culturally contextualize the films

A brief history of lesbianism in India

Unlike the history of homosexuality in Western scholarly literature, which predominantly focuses on the male aspect of homosexuality, Indian scholarly literature has slowly seen a rise of accounts of the history of lesbianism in India in

its print literature Author Giti Thadani quotes A L Basham in her book Sakhiyani

that “ ancient India was far healthier than most ancient cultures” (4) because of pre-patriarchal traditions characterized by “gynefocal traditions, feminine genealogies, unconsorted dual and multiple feminine divinities” (13) There have been many temples in ancient India devoted to feminine iconography and yonic symbols, for example the then existing 64-yogini temples which had central open spaces as an expression of the “adya Shakti” or the primal energy Ancient visual depictions of certain traditions and myths have, in certain instances, openly illustrated lesbian depictions or females deriving pleasure from each other Depictions of such scenes are carved out in the Khajuraho temples in India, although it has to be acknowledged that these depictions are both homosexual and heterosexual in nature Paintings or drawings sometimes have had explicit lesbian depictions of “Radha’s sakhis erotically playing together in water” (Thadani, 72) There was also the rise of Shaktism in ancient India, where the unconsorted

goddess traditions were marked by “philosophies and motifs found in the earlier gynefocal traditions [and there was also] the development of the Kali spectrum of goddesses” (Thadani, 13) which established the philosophies of gender fluidity

Texts apart from the Rig Ved, which contains much of the work done during the Vedic period, and is generally understood as being a homogenous block representing various forms of patriarchal cosmology and mythology, talk about there being a presence of Shaktic texts that refer to the feminine genealogies and develop them from different aspects The aforementioned examples then suggest that there existed elaborate gynefocal continuums which were far removed from the present day hetero-normative patriarchal traditions Female sexuality in ancient India had more opportunities for expression and existence than in the present day situation

It has to be noted that ‘prior to late-nineteenth-century European sexologists’ and psychologists’ invention of labelled identity categories such as

invert, homosexual, lesbian and heterosexual, inchoate sexualities and sexual

behaviours existed but were not perceived or named as defining individuals, groups

or relationships” (Vanita, 1) This is an idea Foucault explicated at length in The History of Sexuality, that it is only through the modern concept of homosexuality

that the identity of a homosexual person is established However, the terms ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ have been adopted by many people living in India not only for identity purposes, but also because these terms carry with them some form of political viability for purposes of civil rights movements especially in urban India (Vanita, 5) For example, since the year 2004, civil rights movements gained greater visibility to change the Indian Penal Code 377 to decriminalize

homosexuality In the year 2009, the petitions from various groups were successful and the penal code was amended This is explained in the later paragraphs which discuss the current state of homosexuality in India

It is difficult to pinpoint an exact time period when the destruction of the gynefocal traditions took place and the establishment of the patriarchal tradition began However, there seems to be a general consensus that a deep entrenchment of patriarchal tradition occurred once the Rig Ved was consolidated and the Laws of Manu came about It is generally agreed upon by scholars that the Laws of Manu were written between 200 BCE 200 CE and Giti Thadani writes that

[m]any parts of the Rig Ved have been deprived, appropriated and manipulated from the earlier feminine cosmogonies and function as

a palimpsest What makes the ten volumes of the Rig Ved fascinating is that in its present form, it is a testimony to the period which is marked by the shift from the earlier feminine cosmo-social matrixes to the establishment of perhaps the first patriarchy (18) Following this, the consolidation of patriarchal ideology became established later

in the Laws of Manu Thadani writes that in the eighth chapter of the Laws of Manu, it is clearly stated that the heterosexual family is the only permissible mode

of kinship, and it is also within this chapter that the laws against lesbian sexuality are mentioned and that they could not be expiated (53) These laws have a distinct contrast to the laws against male homosexuality, which are only cursorily mentioned What is significant is that the laws against male homosexuality can be expiated and the male is also allowed an opportunity to repent, whereas the female

is not allowed to do so In summary, the Rig Ved and Laws of Manu introduced a complex system of taboos, where the woman and her sexuality become objects of exchange between men, and in so doing, women could not actively initiate any form of desire

Patriarchy became even more firmly entrenched in Indian society with the advent of colonialism Colonialism, in particular, is considered a pivotal point because of the introduction of the antisodomy law , or Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (Bhaskaran, 15) By the year 1833, chaired by Lord Macaulay, “a series of law commissions met to codify a uniform criminal and civil law for the whole of India” (Bhaskaran, 19) The binary notions of the East and the West slowly started emerging and “women were made into the regulatory site of tradition and the management of sexuality was essential” (Thadani, 68) Thus masculinisation of female iconography began to take place, the eroticism of Radha and her sakhis was subsumed under the foregrounding of the great heterosexual love between Radha and Krishna, and alternative texts which mention female sexuality, and their writers, have been completely ignored when creating a canon for the Indian literary tradition

The Western construct is conveyed through images of educated but morally suspect women who actively court desire as opposed to the Eastern construct where women are chaste, spiritual and self-sacrificing This East/West binary, from the time of colonisation till today, has led to the proclamation of specifically female homosexuality as the foreign “other” to India in a bid to construct an Indian tradition separate from their colonizers As a result of the rendering of homosexuality as foreign, there is an “entire ideological presupposition of history

or tradition as a closed system, as if one were dealing with closed static structures where change could only come from the outside—as pollution” (Thadani, 6) This binary notion of the East versus West will be further elaborated in the sections discussing the transnational Indian films

This brief history of female homosexuality or lesbianism foregrounds the fact that lesbianism has always been present in Indian society in its myriad manifestations, although the term ‘lesbian’ may not have carried the same meanings as it does in today’s context The historical background also illustrates that dissent and strong denial where lesbianism is concerned is testament to the deep entrenchment of hetero-normative patriarchal ideology that renders invisible anything that becomes a threat to the smooth workings of this ideology Also, a denial of such a history only makes available to the Indian lesbian a framework of

identification that has emerged specifically from the West

Current status of homosexuality in India

The 150-year-old colonial law that criminalized all forms of sex “other than heterosexual penile-vaginal” (“Delhi High Court Statement”, 3) sex—Section 377

of the Indian Penal Code—was finally amended on 2nd July 2009 India officially became the 127th country in the world to decriminalize homosexuality As an ex-colonial entity, India chose to cling on to this law even though UK had abolished it

40 years ago Prior to the Delhi High Court issuing an official statement on decriminalizing homosexuality, the first public gay parade on the streets was held simultaneously in three cities in India, Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata, on 29th June

2009, “the first such national event in [the] conservative country” (The Economist,

Web source) The Indian gay rights movement put up a united front after Mehta’s

movie Fire was banned in 1996, following violent protests and outright

discrimination against homosexuals by the Hindu fundamentalists involved in different political parties It is important to note here that the Supreme Court is in Delhi—the administrative province of India—and hence all major legal decisions

are made in Delhi These decisions, however, are applicable throughout India’s other regions and cities

Even though legally, homosexuality has been decriminalized in India, religious and political leaders “across the spectrum invoked the ‘will of God’ to claim that the ruling would lead to the ‘ruination’ of society and family values”

(The Times of India, Web source) According to a report in the newspaper The Times of India, Indian society at large still strongly disapproves of homosexuality

and many people consider it ‘unnatural’ and they inevitably fall back on the ‘Evil West’ argument, that homosexuality is a Western import, a foreign Other to India and that at best, it is a disease

Division of chapters

This thesis will be divided into three main chapters: Analysis of the

transnational Indian films: Fire, Chutney Popcorn, Nina’s Heavenly Delights, I Can’t Think Straight and The World Unseen, Analysis of the Bollywood and regional films: Girlfriend and The Journey/Sancharram, and Discussion of the

seven films These three chapters will be followed by a concluding chapter

The first chapter analysing the transnational Indian films will analyse five

films, Fire, Chutney Popcorn, Nina’s Heavenly Delights, I Can’t Think Straight and The World Unseen These films are discussed together in this chapter because

they are produced out of India In this chapter, a close reading is done of the films and some of the issues that arise are racialized notions of desire on screen, an unquestioning relationship with western notions of homosexuality, political reactions to these films in India and a progression of how this issue has been handled on screen over the years These issues will be discussed in depth in Chapter Three with feminist film theory as a background

The second chapter on Bollywood and regional films will analyse two

films, Girlfriend and The Journey These two films are discussed in this chapter

because they are produced in India A close reading of the films is done and the two films, when juxtaposed together, will try to negotiate the tensions between the homophobic Indian society and a more positive portrayal of lesbians in India These two issues will be discussed in Chapter Three as well

The third chapter on the discussion of the seven films of three different genres, transnational, Bollywood and a regional film, will generate a comparative discussion using feminist film theory and queer theory as a background This chapter goes beyond the close reading done in the previous two chapters to discuss the major themes and issues that have repeatedly surfaced during the analysis of the seven films

The concluding chapter will offer a summary, some comments and limitations of the study, and possible future directions where the question of representation of lesbians is concerned in the Indian films

Chapter One

Analysis of the transnational Indian Films: Fire, Chutney Popcorn, Nina’s

Heavenly Delights, I Can’t Think Straight and The World Unseen

This chapter engages in a close-reading of the five transnational Indian

films Fire, Chutney Popcorn, Nina’s Heavenly Delights, I Can’t Think Straight and The World Unseen These five films will be analysed in this chapter because they

are produced outside of India although within Indian production networks Their producers and directors are of Indian origin although they are settled outside of India The films predominantly have Indian actors and their dialogues are in English

Fire by Deepa Mehta is considered as a cultural landmark in the history of

Indian cinema for its brave attempt in portraying a gender-related taboo topic for

the first time—lesbian desire in an Indian social context Fire, in “the raising of

discomfort levels about [the] so-called regular, happy home and family lives emerges as some sort of a site of feminist resistance” (Bose, 250), and Mehta develops this in her movie in various ways Firstly, human relationships in the movie are shown to be barren and empty, illustrated by the servant Mundu’s masturbation episodes in the movie, and the paralyzed mother-in-law who constantly demands attention and expects everyone to follow conventional behavioural codes Radha’s husband Ashok is an ascetic who demands of his wife cruel bedroom rituals of lying next to him to test his strength of resisting sexual temptation (which can also be taken as a direct critique of Gandhi’s practices) Ashok’s brother Jatin (and Sita’s husband) is shown to have an extramarital affair with a Chinese woman, and his sexual escapades with her are borne out of mere lust Heterosexual human relationships are laid out in the movie as futile and devoid of a loving touch that is needed to nurture any relationship

Secondly, with the arrival of Sita, the younger daughter-in-law, in the household, the importance of the physical contact and touch surfaces because with her arrival the two women, Radha and Sita, are brought together to seek comfort in each other’s arms The urgency of the human touch is brought out most prominently in Sita’s first sexual encounter with Jatin that is marked by brutality and indifference on Jatin’s part To him, it is a ‘baby-making’ project after which

he turns his back on Sita and goes to sleep This episode is contrasted sharply to a scene in which Radha is oiling Sita’s hair, symbolising a comforting and caring relationship that is at once nurturing and intimate A loving sexual relationship develops between Radha and Sita, a relationship that is consciously contrasted with Ashok’s asceticism, with Jatin and his Chinese girlfriend, with Mundu’s masturbatory experiences, and the mute traditions of the mother-in-law

Thirdly, Mehta’s biggest affirmation of the lesbian relationship that offers feminist resistance is at the end of the movie Radha is made to go through a literal

‘agnipariksha’ or a ‘trial by fire’ that is so central to the Indian psyche,

foregrounded in the Hindu mythology Ramayana According to ancient Hindu

tradition, fire or Agni is the purifying god of the household on whom also falls the task of bearing witness to the chastity of women and accordingly deciding their fates Ashok sets Radha’s sari on fire, and she escapes unharmed from this fire although her blackened sari and smudged face bear witness of the life-threatening trial she has just gone through The fire, by not harming Radha, establishes her chastity and in extension it is implied that Radha and Sita’s relationship is chaste and pure Radha flings her sari aside, and in doing so also flings aside the fetters of the sterile hetero-patriarchal ties that she was subjugated to Radha then makes her way to the shrine of the Sufi saint where Sita is waiting for her The shrine “also

represents the presence of a humanist faith outside self-denying rigid religious structures [and] the narrative moves away from constricting frameworks and patriarchal institutions to render the acquisition of agency possible for both Radha and Sita” (Jain, 132)

However, the biggest critique of this film stems from these very (positive) points that Mehta has tried to drive home to her audience Firstly, the lesbian relationship between Radha and Sita appears to develop as a result of the crippling pressures of the middle-class patriarchal family they are married into Brinda Bose

says that “the film’s particular representation of female homosexuality as the only available recourse for two women who have been slighted in their heterosexual

encounters has apparently not troubled its viewers at all This notion undermines what gay and lesbian rights activists have been long demanding—the right to

pursue homosexual preference with a larger sphere of sexual choices” (my

emphasis, 251) When Sita asks Jatin whether he likes her in the beginning of the movie, had he answered with a resounding “yes” to that question, it almost feels as

if the premise for the homosexual relationship to develop would have completely ceased to exist In the words of Bose, Radha and Sita “might just as well have been

drawn to other men had such an opportunity presented itself; just as they would not have been drawn to anyone else at all” (my emphasis, 252) had their husbands paid

more attention to them in the marital norm and not deprived them of their conjugal rights

The radical potential of the political content of the film is thus diluted by making homosexuality a mere retaliatory weapon / replacement comfort that the women use against their sexless marriages (especially Radha) Furthermore, the question of choice is another concern that needs to be addressed in this movie

Radha and Sita are two women who are traditionally confined to the space of their home and therefore there is a very limited choice that the two women have in the household with regards to the object of their desire They thus end up desiring each other due to the aberrant male heterosexualities that they are exposed to continually within the surrounds of their home The effect that this has is that the issue of lesbianism in this movie is not taken in a very serious light, where there is a constant reminder that the relationship resulted from failed heterosexual relationships and therefore does not have a legitimate reason for existing in its own right

Secondly, the homosexual relationship between Radha and Sita reinforces and perpetuates stereotypes such as butch and femme roles, which makes the images employed to illustrate their relationship consistently heterosexual Sita is aligned with the “butch” category Her weakness for male attire and habits (smoking) is established right from the beginning when she dresses up in Jatin’s masculine attire She is also bold and adventurous as opposed to the shy and more feminine Radha who is aligned with the “femme” category The most striking illustration of this butch/femme trope is enacted in the scene when Radha, dressed

in a traditional sari, and Sita dressed in Jatin’s clothes, have a playful dance sequence in the mother-in-law’s (Biji’s) room Although the two female protagonists here enter a markedly queer territory, masculine/feminine roles in heterosexual encounters are re-enacted in Radha and Sita’s relationship, thereby not only perpetuating harmful stereotypes such as butch/femme and not being able

to move beyond this categorization, but also foregrounding heterosexual modes of

courtship, thereby crippling the potential efficacy of this film to alter attitudes of homophobia in the Indian social context

Thirdly, in structuring the movie along the lines of the male gaze, Mehta

“still regresses to an old pattern in which the men remain the voyeurs, the fetishists and the bearers of the look” (Bose, 257) Radha and Sita seek comfort in each other’s arms mainly due to the fact that there is an absolute denial of the admiring male gaze from the men in their lives More importantly, it is through the witnessing of their intimate scene at the end by Mundu that their relationship is discovered When this is revealed to Ashok by Mundu, Ashok then peeps through the bedroom door and witnesses the gratuitous love scene between Radha and Sita This scene is then imagined and worked through the eyes of the husband once again Through such voyeuristic acts, not only are the male characters employing the male gaze to look at the two female lovers, but it implicates the male spectator

as well The image of Radha and Sita making love is a source of anxiety for Ashok and he seeks to nullify it The male spectator, “through narcissistic identification with the male protagonist” (Nair, 56) employs the male gaze to gain a “reassuring sense of omnipotence” (Nair, 56) as well when Ashok metes out the punishment to Radha The excessive use of the male gaze in the movie “reinforces subordination

or compliance to the norms defined by patriarchy” (Jain, 119) and the movie

therefore does not offer “any grand utopic vision for its expectant radical/feminist

viewership” (Bose, 258) This episode will be discussed in greater depth in Chapter Three by contextualising it within feminist film theory and the male gaze within this theoretical framework

Radha and Sita are ‘queer’ characters in the film mainly due to the choice they make—choosing each other at the end instead of their respective heteropatriarchal lifestyles with their husbands It can also be argued that the male characters in the film also occupy queer spaces to a certain extent, particularly the

servant Mundu Mundu’s “crime (against the institution of the family) of unsanctioned sexuality is masturbating to [western pornographic films] in front of Biji, because of a lack of privacy, and he is excused by absolution from the swami” (Desai, 167) Mundu is a servant of the household, and as a lower class man, he is associated with “animalistic and uncontrolled sexual desire” (Desai, 167), and these desires categorise him as being sexually deviant However, this thesis will not

be delving into the queering of the male characters in detail since it specifically foregrounds the issue of lesbianism as its main focus

Chutney Popcorn by Nisha Ganatra released three years after Fire,

incorporates a female protagonist who is more tenuously located in the queer

territory than Radha and Sita in Fire Reena in Chutney Popcorn is rendered queer

not only “on the basis of her sexuality [but also] on being an artist (which for her mother is hardly a respectable or acceptable field of work), not being able to reproduce Hindu culture properly, inability to cook and fit a certain normative gender role, becoming a surrogate mother—all locate her in queer territory, outside

‘the regimes of the normal’” (Arora, 41) With the central motif of henna-drawing framing the entire narrative, Reena is introduced in the opening sequence of the movie as an Indian lesbian with her Caucasian lover Lisa, where both are intimately drawing henna patterns on each others’ bodies A peculiarly South Asian ritual of applying henna during a heterosexual marriage ceremony is re-appropriated and incorporated onto an inter-racial lesbian body, where both issues

of race and sexuality converge, a point which will be discussed in later paragraphs

Chutney Popcorn puts forth many promising possibilities of a positive

representation of lesbianism and to a certain extent, it can also be said to provide a resistance to negative stereotypes of lesbianism Returning to the central motif of

henna, the absence of it in Reena’s sister, Sarita’s wedding to her Caucasian boyfriend Mitch, is contrasted starkly with the consistent presence of henna in the relationship between the two lesbian lovers Reena and Lisa The significance of this is twofold Firstly, it foreshadows the sterility, both literal and metaphorical, in the heterosexual relationship between Sarita and Mitch because of the inability to procreate Secondly, the intimate and erotic connotations of henna that are reserved traditionally for a heterosexual union are transposed onto the lesbian couple, thereby giving their relationship a kind of legitimacy similar to the one given to

Radha and Sita in Fire by the motif of fire that legitimises their relationship at the end of the movie As in Fire, heterosexual love signified by Sarita and Mitch “is

variously mocked as impotent, shorn of erotic tenderness and, furthermore, incapable of reproduction” (Arora, 34) Sarita increasingly becomes estranged from Mitch until it reaches a point where there is no indication of any aspect of physical intimacy between the two On the other hand, erotic tenderness is associated with the two lesbian lovers, Reena and Lisa As shown by the opening sequence, the lesbian lovers are erotically applying henna on each other and are shown to do so consistently throughout the movie The application of henna is a prelude to their love-making scenes A heterosexual ritual, which is performative in itself, then gets

re-appropriated to celebrate a homosexual and interracial couple

Reena’s henna-patterning is almost always followed by a photographic shot

of the hennaed body—usually a white female body with henna patterns on it This

is an important tactic employed in the film because the gaze behind the camera is that of a female—specifically, that of an Indian lesbian Reena’s gaze behind the camera is an instance of re-appropriating the male gaze that is deployed in the

movie Fire, where the love-making scene between Radha and Sita is reworked

through the eyes of males, Ashok and Mundu Hence, the movie is not explicitly structured along the lines of the male gaze At the end of the movie, a series of black-and-white photographs follow to imply a ‘happily-ever-after’ ending of the lesbian relationship as well as same-sex parenthood, where even the conservative mother comes to accept her daughter’s lesbianism and her decision to have a child

The major positive change in the movie is seen through Reena’s sister Sarita, who struggles with the crushed ideals of a normative heteropatriarchal family where she is expected to produce a child and create her own nuclear family unit She slowly comes to accept her sister Reena’s alternate lifestyle and starts taking her lesbian sister seriously, first when she enters the tattoo parlour to tattoo the symbol ‘Om’ with henna “on a lesbian body in a space inhabited by lesbian bodies” (Arora, 35), and second when she corrects her mother in the supermarket

by saying that lesbianism is not a disease Sarita then starts articulating her dissatisfaction with the traditional heteronormative lifestyle expected of her, also seen in her estrangement from her husband Mitch She also starts questioning the role of a woman for the purposes of biological reproduction when she declines to accept the baby that Reena is having for her by saying to her husband that “maybe [she is] just not meant to have a baby” (dialogue from the movie)

However, all these positive points about the movie are undermined to reveal problematic issues and depictions concerning lesbianism that are embedded firmly

in the overall narrative Firstly, at the beginning of the movie during Sarita’s wedding celebrations, Reena’s homosexuality is “firmly placed outside the circle of ethnic community” (Arora, 36) when both Reena and Lisa are spatially located on the margins of the celebrations that are taking place—the song and dance and feasting after the wedding The space of the heterosexual wedding and its

celebrations cannot accommodate a homosexual relationship and recognise it as

legitimate The ground of high moral and cultural virtue is still maintained and sanctioned by the heterosexual wedding that takes place, never mind the fact that it

is an interracial one

Secondly, the issue of race that converges with sexuality is an important one when it comes to the question of representation of lesbians in the Indian social context—diaspora or otherwise The movie presents issues of race, or interracial relationships, in a blissfully ignorant light, pretending that tensions do not exist at all The only time when a potential confrontation happens is when Sarita tells her

Caucasian husband Mitch that “I don’t need you to tell me how to be Indian” when

he tells her that the Hindu god Shiva is genderless It is a promising provocation offered by Sarita but it does not culminate into something more that grapples with issues of racial identity and how it is linked to sexual identity Reena and Lisa’s relationship barely addresses the issue of race as well What does happen in effect

is that the gay culture of the West is appropriated unquestioningly and quite effortlessly in the lingua franca of the Indian lesbian Reena Words such as ‘dyke’ and the stereotypes put forth as to what kind of dyke a woman is when she is passing by the henna-tattoo parlour—her haircut, her jacket—all strongly identify with the ‘Western/American’ gay cultural scene Apart from the negative connotations the word ‘dyke’ carries with it (it can be argued that the word has been re-appropriated by lesbians positively, however, it is still considered a slur when used by persons who are not homosexuals) and the stereotypes it evokes of lesbians as masculine, brash and crude, it is also an indication that at the linguistic level such descriptors cannot move beyond and cannot imagine a way out of a heteronormative patriarchal discourse Queer film theorist Andrea Weiss calls this

the “essentialist trap, on the one hand, that imagines lesbianism to be completely outside of patriarchal definitions and on the other hand, the trap that situates lesbianism so strictly within patriarchal definitions that it can’t imagine any way out from them” (Weiss, 50) Such an “essentialist trap” and the unquestioning, unproblematized encounter with the West homogenises the experiences of lesbians, especially non-Western lesbians, despite racial and cultural differences and does not allow them to articulate a unique identity based on these differentials of race and culture

Still on the issue of race, the movie presents a stark contrast between the two mothers of the two lesbian protagonists, Reena’s mother and Lisa’s mother Reena’s mother, Meena, is shown to be against the alternative lifestyle Reena has chosen for herself Lisa’s mother, on the other hand, is shown to be totally accepting of her daughter’s homosexuality as well as Reena as her daughter’s partner Meena does not acknowledge Lisa as Reena’s partner, instead, she constantly refers to Lisa as Reena’s roommate Apart from her not accepting her daughter’s lesbianism, Meena puts forth damaging stereotypes of a lesbian—in this case a lesbian of Indian heritage According to Meena, being gay is a “disease” and Reena’s decision to get pregnant “will finally make Reena want to have a husband” and therefore ‘cure’ her of lesbianism This is a reference to the stereotype that lesbianism is a disease and given the right (medical) treatment, a woman can be cured of it Furthermore, Reena’s decision to be a surrogate mother elicits a sharp

“it’s not natural!” from Meena, indicating that it is not even conceivable to her that

a lesbian should bear Sarita’s child The Indian mother, therefore, embodies the

stereotypical notions that the East is a conservative entity and alternate sexualities have no place there A stark contrast to this is Lisa’s mother, embodying the